No Witnesses

NoNukes writes:

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I'd take issue with the your statement that macroevolution has been witnessed.

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Except that it has. We have seen speciation happen both in the lab and in the field. That's "macroevolution."Note, there is no difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution." "Microevolution" are evolutionary processes that happen below the species level while "macroevolution" are processes that happen above the species level. You will note that there is no distinction as to what those processes are. In essence, "macroevolution" is nothing more than a whole lot of "microevolution."After all, if 1 + 1 = 2, why can't 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10?Exactly what do you mean by "macroevolution" and why do you think we haven't seen it directly?

NoNukes responds to me:

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Except that it has. We have seen speciation happen both in the lab and in the field. That's "macroevolution."

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I don't think that statement is quite true.

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Then there is an easy way for you to find out:Do some research.This is a serious set of questions here: When was the last time you read a biology journal? When was the last time you were in a science library? Have you bothered to do a simple PubMed search for the latest articles on speciation?If not, what makes you think you are in a position to make such a claim? I mean that in the nicest way possible. One of the biggest problems with dealing with deniers of science is that they don't actually pay attention to the state of the science. They make claims about things that have long since been examined, trying to say that "nobody has ever studied this." Take Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box. He kept on saying that nobody has ever studied molecular evolution and gave specific examples that he insisted had never been studied.And yet a simple PubMed search yielded literally hundreds of papers on the very subjects he claimed nobody had ever published anything about anywhere.If we who understand that science doesn't say things it doesn't have evidence for can't keep up, how can we effectively discuss the topic? Let's not forget that part of the reason that the Dover case ended the way it did was because Behe once again claimed that "nobody had ever studied" various topics and he was presented with paper after paper that he claimed didn't exist. The pile grew so tall that he was literally hidden behind it.

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I believe you've seen before and after conditions in circumstances such that an inference of macroevolution is inescapable.

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Huh? If we've seen it happen right before our eyes, how is that not precisely the evidence you are claiming doesn't exist? Or are you trying to say that we didn't actually watch it happen? That is, are you intimating that we saw the grandparents and the grandkids and are only inferring the parents in between rather than actually seeing them?Because I'm talking about the latter. We have watched species create new species directly, seeing every single generation between the two. Reproductive isolation can be achieved in as few as 13 generations.

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Please note that I am not saying that there is no conclusive, scientific evidence for evolution or speciation.

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Then what precisely are you saying? We have seen speciation happen right in front of our eyes. That is precisely what you claim hasn't happened. But even the most simplistic of investigations into the subject will show that to be false. We've seen it happen both in the lab and in the field. So what else do you need? References?It's cliche, but have you bothered to look here:Observed Instances of Speciation
Some More Observed Speciation EventsSome of these instances of observed speciation events are over 100 years old. This understanding of how evolution works is nothing new.

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Exactly what do you mean by "macroevolution" and why do you think we haven't seen it directly?

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Macroevolution simply means a degree of microevolution that a creationist will not accept.

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That's hardly a useful defintion, but that is the reality we are facing. It's the old definition of "kind." "Organisms reproduce after their 'kind'" with "kind" conveniently left undefined so that they can keep moving it up the taxonomic ladder every time we find evidence for evolution at the level they say it can't happen at.

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Because "kinds" has no real meaning, macroevolution cannot have real meaning either.

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Incorrect. Just because the creationists aren't being intellectually honest doesn't mean we have to be as perverse as they are. "Macroevolution" has an understood meaning by biologists: Evolutionary processes above the species level.

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My remarks are intended to imply that we have not observed evolution directly either

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And that is incorrect, too. In fact, you can demonstration evolution right in front of your eyes in your very own high school biology lab. It doesn't cost a lot and it doesn't take a long time to do it, either.Take a single E. coli bacterium of K-type. This means the bacterium is susceptible to T4 phage. Let this bacterium reproduce until it forms a lawn. Then, infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do we expect to happen? That's right, plaques should start to form and, eventually, the entire lawn will die. After all, every single bacterium in the lawn is descended from a single ancestor, so if the ancestor is susceptible, then all the offspring should be susceptible, too.But what we actually see is that some colonies of bacteria in the lawn are not affected by the phage.How can this be? Again, the entire lawn is descended from a single ancestor. They should all behave identically. If one is susceptible, then they're all susceptible. If one is immune, then they're all immune. This can't be an example of "adaptation" because if one could do it, they all could do it.But since there is a discrepancy, we are left with only one conclusion: The bacteria evolved. There must be a genetic difference between the bacteria that are surviving and those that died.Indeed, we call the new bacteria K-4 because they are immune to T4 phage.But we're not done. Take a single K-4 bacterium and repeat the process: Let it reproduce to form a lawn and then infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do we expect to happen? That's right: Absolutely nothing. All of the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor that is immune to T4 phage. Therefore, they all should survive and we shouldn't see any plaques form.But we do. Plaques do, indeed start to form. How can this be? Again, all the bacteria in the lawn are descended from a single ancestor that was immune to T4 phage, so they should all behave identically. If one is immune, then all are immune. There must be something else going on.Something evolved, but the question is what. What evolved? Could it be the bacteria experiencing a reversion mutation back to K-type? No, that can't be it. Suppose any given bacteria did revert back to wild. It is surrounded by K-4 type who are immune to T4 phage. As soon as the lawn is infected, those few bacteria will die and immediately be replaced by the offspring of the immune K-4 bacteria. We would never see any plaques forming because the immune bacteria keep filling in any holes that appear.So if it isn't the bacteria that evolved, it must be the phage. And, indeed, we call the new phage T4h as it has evolved a new host specificity.There is a similar experiment where you take bacteria that have had their lactose operons removed and they evolve to be able to digest lactose again.You might want to look up the information regarding the development of bacteria capable of digesting nylon oligimers. It's the result of a single frame-shift mutation.We have seen evolutionary change from the smallest shifts to new species, genera, even orders and families, all right in front of our eyes. We shouldn't hold this information back.

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where a direct observation of evolution would mean directly observing the process that results in the population of offspring differing from its ancestor population due to diversity + natural selection. Instead we have simply observed parents and evolved offsprings and reached a conclusion of evolution.

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And you would be wrong. We have seen exactly what you claim has never been observed.Seriously: When was the last time you read the journals? Why don't you know this?

NoNukes responds to me:

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I'm not a denier of science.

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I didn't say you were (at least, not yet). Read my post again. There's a part where I talk about "we who understand." Consider who "we" might be.

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I'm commenting only on the meaning of the word witness, which implies using direct evidence and minimal use (read that as essentially no use) use inference to reach a conclusion.

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And I'm saying we have done that. I have given you some references and shown you how to do an experiment where you can "witness" it for yourself.You say you don't deny science and yet you say that evolution hasn't been witnessed. My response was for you to go to the science library and read the journals so that you can convince yourself that your claim is false. We have seen evolution happen. Right in front of our eyes. Both in the lab under controlled conditions and in the field.So you are now faced with a choice: Do you do the work required to verify that? Do you go and read the references? Or do you deny it?

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In my opinion, and I invite you to argue otherwise, none of the examples in your discussion involve observations that would meet the definition of witnessing macroevolution.

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"Macroevolution" means evolutionary processes at the species level and above. Ergo, speciation is, by definition, "macroevolution."Since we have seen speciation happen right in front of our eyes both in the lab and in the field, that means we have directly witnessed "macroevolution."I have given you references.Why are you denying it?

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"Macroevolution", which I'll loosely identify as an evolutionary process producing a critter that is a different "kind" than its ancestors is not a process that can be witnessed.

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Why not? All you have to do is sit and wait. When you can directly observe every single generation between the origin species and the child species, how is that not precisely what it is you claim cannot be seen?

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Instead it is necessary to collect evidence from which macroevolution can be conclusively demonstrated. The experiments you describe seem to me of exactly that type.

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How is speciation not "macroevolution"? And if we observe speciation, how is that not direct observation of it?It's like you're saying that 1 exists, 2 exists, addition exists and works, and equality is real, but none of that means 1 + 1 = 2.

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In short, I believe our disagreement is about the definition of witness and not about the science at all.

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Perhaps, but you keep shifting the goalposts. You claimed it had never been seen and then when you were presented with the very thing you claimed didn't exist, you changed your argument.What would it take for you to say that it had been? Your claim that it cannot be seen is to deny science. You seem to be saying that unless we can literally view the atoms bonding (which we have), then we haven't actually "seen" anything.And that's a crock.

NoNukes responds to me:

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Why not? All you have to do is sit and wait. When you can directly observe every single generation between the origin species and the child species, how is that not precisely what it is you claim cannot be seen?

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Because I cannot wait that long to observe macroevolution.

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Yes, you can! Did you not read any of the references I provided to you? Why on earth do you think we do research on organisms like Drosophilia and E. coli? Because they reproduce at such fast rates that we don't have to wait too long. Yes, some experiments may take decades to resolve, but don't confuse your impatience for a universal trait.

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Only the most foolish of the fools denies that bacteria can evolve.

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Into new species, yes. That's macroevolution by definition. We've seen it happen. There's an ongoing experiment that has been running for decades on bacteria, just to see what they do.What makes you think that we don't have time?

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I've been consistent about what I mean by "witness", "observe", and "macroevolution" throughout this discussion and in every other discussion I've participated in.

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Then explain it again. What would it take for you to say we've "witnessed" speciation (which is, by definition, "macroevolution")? If seeing every single generation between the parent species and the child species isn't sufficient, what is?There's an example I often use to try and explain to creationists why their vision of an ostrich being hatched from an alligator egg is a gross caricature of evolution and it seems it applies here:You and I are standing on a giant blowup of the visible spectrum, each nanometer of wavelength hundreds of feet apart. We're standing at 500 nm. Same color, right? It's green.You take one step toward red and I take one step toward violet. Would either one of us be able to tell the difference between the two colors we're now standing on? They're different, yes, but they are so close together so as to be indistinguishable to the human eye. In fact, we could both walk in our given directions for quite some distance without being able to discern a change.But if we keep walking, eventually I'm going to be standing in a color we can definitely call "blue" and you'll be somewhere in "yellow." No one step is sufficient for us to call it a change but the collection of steps absolutely resulted in a shift. And since we directly observed each step, we can rightly say that we've "witnessed" it.So I am asking you directly for at least the third time: What more do you need? When we have directly observed and examined every single generation between parent and child species, how is that not direct observation of "macroevolution"? Exactly what is it you are looking for?

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And since we are talking about macroevolution as creationists might see it, then speciation would be an inappropriate definition for this discussion.

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But a creationist will never accept it. They stick to their term of "kind." It used to be that a "kind" was "species," but then we directly witnessed speciation. In fact, we've seen the creation of new genera, new families, and even a new order or two. You will note that the latest creationist claim has to do with the Pre-Cambrian and the creation of the various phyla. They know that a phylum is so far up the taxonomic tree that we'll never see the creation of a new one in our lifetimes.So as to your demand about "macroevolution as creationists might see it," that's a moving target. They won't say anything other than "kind" and are adamant about not defining what a "kind" is. "Macroevolution" means simply evolutionary processes at or above the species level.We've directly observed that.Why would you have us deny that?

NoNukes responds to me:

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You are insisting on a definition of macroevolution that nobody else in this thread is using.

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I use the actual definition of the word. What other definition possibly makes sense? If "black" gets to mean "white," then you can claim anything you want.

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I find it interesting that you claim that we have "viewed" atoms binding. My own vision isn't able to perceive E&M radiation with wavelenghts on the order of Angstroms, so I don't claim to have "viewed" or directly observed events require an ability to see things so small.

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It's called a scanning-tunneling microscrope. With it, we can not only image individual atoms, we can pick them up and place them. Surely you've seen the famous micrograph of the IBM logo, yes? It's from more than 20 years ago. This is not new. Or does mechanical assistance not count for "viewed"? What does that mean for people who wear glasses? Are they not actually "viewing" anything?You keep moving the goalposts.

NoNukes responds to me:

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Viewing is done optically. Using aids such as a microscope, telescope or glasses would be viewing. Using an electron microscope would not be viewing.

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Why on earth not? Why do we get to amplify them through optical means but by no other method? By this logic, we have never "viewed" electricity except as sparks. We've never "viewed" any light beyond the visible spectrum since it requires translation. All those gamma ray bursts that come from the universe, well, we've never actually "seen" them since that requires mechanical equipment to detect them. If you put on gloves, then you're not really "feeling" anything since the sensation is being mechanically transmitted.Your definition is untenable. Why is transmission via photon acceptable but not via electron?

NoNukes responds to me:

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We view objects by allowing light from the object to enter our eye, where portions of our eye are sensitive to that light.

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This is such a hyper-fine definition of "view" as to be worthless. Why must the only legitimate method be a direct path of a single photon from object to retina? Why are mechanical means of amplifying photons or detecting photons that do not stimulate the nerves in our eyes disallowed?

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I think Dr. A has done a pretty good job of explaining why an STM is not viewing.

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Only by an unacceptable definition of "viewing."

NoNukes writes:

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My point is merely that when a creationist says that a dog giving birth to something other than a dog has never been witnessed, the statement is true

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A dog? Yes. But we've witnessed lots of other species giving birth to something other than the species they are.Surely dogs aren't the sole criterion to determine speciation, are they?To a creationist, "macroevolution" is a moving target meaning, "evolutionary changes I don't think we've ever seen." It used to be that a "kind" meant "species"...but then we saw speciation happen. So now they demand processes that tend to take longer than humans have been keeping records about evolutionary changes.

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A creationist believes that there is some absolute, God enforced barrier between "kinds"

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Which they refuse to define.So why do we care what they think?

Dr Adequate writes:

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Now, in plain English I'm lying or at the very least abusing language when I claim to have seen the Loch Ness Monster.

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Um, you've made an error. The problem isn't with the verb, "seen." It's with the noun, "Loch Ness Monster." Anybody who contradicts you in your claim isn't going to be assaulting your means of detection but rather the object of your detection.That is, they're not going to say, "You engaged in some other kind of verb of the Loch Ness Monster." Instead, they're going to say, "That's not the Loch Ness Monster."

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And yet when a machine makes a series of measurements and, based on a theory that tells it how to interpret those measurements, synthesizes a visual representation of its data, you wish to say that someone looking at this visual representation has "seen" atoms.

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Yes. Because "seen" is not restricted to the detection of photons reflected off an object and traversing space without being absorbed and re-emitted until they are intercepted by a retinal cell.

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Now, the English language is a bit sloppy.

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Indeed, but this is not an example of it. Nobody is confused over this use of "see." It means a direct experience whether it be mechanically assisted or not. Any debate is over what was seen, not that you didn't "really see" it.

NoNukes writes:

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Then it must be the case that "seeing" atoms is not direct evidence of atoms bonding.

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Incorrect. In fact, our imaging techniques have made it so we can actually see the bonds.In 3D.Turns out those pictures from your chemistry book about pi-bonds? They were right. They really do look like that.Nobody is confused by using "see" in this manner.

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Accordingly, a definition of seeing that requires you to say that you have seen Lochy when you have only seen the picture in your post cannot possibly be the only correct definition.

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Incorrect. The problem is not the verb "see" but rather then noun "Loch Ness Monster." Nobody is contesting the method of perception, only the object that was perceived.

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The alternative is to give up on discussing some concepts in English.

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Incorrect. The alternative is to stop playing dumb.

Catholic Scientist writes:

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As you say:

as populations change and grow - as described statistically, stoichometrically - over long periods of time.

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I don't think you can witness that happening, do you?

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Yes.Because we have.Multiple times.In the lab and in the wild.On plenty of organisms.Why would you have us deny that?

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You guys are getting hung up on what "seeing" means, when the topic is witnessing.

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Indeed, they are getting hung up on the word "seeing" when the problem isn't the verb, it's the noun. Nobody is disputing that things have been "witnessed." What is disputed is what those things are.

Catholic Scientist responds to me:

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In the message you replied to, just before where you started quoting, I explained my reasoning:

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Yup, and if they had a more proper image of macroevolution (like the one I linked to above from Biology Online), I still think there'd be a point that people haven't really witnessed macroevolution.

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But we have. Multiple times. In the lab and in the wild. On plenty of organisms. I've posted the references. Why would you have us deny that?

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Now, I realize you might wanna count the arrival of a new species of bacteria as technically being macroevolution

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What do you mean "technically"? It either is or it isn't.And it is.And we've seen it in much more complicated organisms than bacteria. We've seen reproductive isolation happen in fish in only 13 generations.Why would you have us deny this?

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but I don't really think that's what people are talking about.

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That's because they're playing a game of moving the goalposts. It used to be that creationists insisted a "kind" was a species because they were absolutely certain that there was no way to get a new species.And then we saw speciation.So they moved up the taxonomic ladder to Genus.And then we saw new genera appear right before our eyes.So now they've moved the goalposts yet again so that the only thing they could possibly accept is an ostrich being hatched from an alligator egg. But no evolutionary biologist would ever claim such a thing is possible. In fact, if you saw such a thing, you'd have to throw a hell of a lot of what we know about biology out the window.We have seen macroevolution. Not in a "technical" sense but in all its glory.

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Its more about gross morphological change.

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Yep, that, too.The problem is that the creationists what to pick and choose what they mean by "gross morphological change." They want it to be something that the most casual observer can spot without any real examination, but that isn't a valid definition. Why can't this gross morphological change be something that requires a dissection to see? Well, because at that point they can simply not do their homework and say, "It looks the same to me!" as if that were sufficient. Look at the way they treat the fossil record: Truly massive morphological changes are called "deformed individuals" rather than separate species. There simply is no evidence they could possibly accept.So why do we care what they think when they are just going to change the definition as soon as you provide the evidence they insist doesn't exist?And on top of that, they want it happening in one step which again isn't evolution but is actually evidence for creation.

Catholic Scientist responds to me:

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You're not talking about the same thing I'm talking about: it takes place over periods of time that are too long to witness in the lab.

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No, it's not. How many times do you need to have the evidence put in front of you before you realize your error? We have seen macroevolution happen right in front of our eyes, multiple times, both in the lab and in the field.

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There isn't only one definition of "macroevolution".

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No, there isn't. While creationists use the word to mean "evolutionary processes I don't think can happen," that isn't an actual definition of the word. Every single time they drew a line in the sand to define what "kind" was in order to claim that "evolution can't produce changes between kinds," they had to then move the goalposts as to what a "kind" was when we were able to show just that: Changes in species, genera, even families and orders.We've witnessed them directly.Why do you insist we lie about that?

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I linked to the definition from Biology Online and their's seems to be even higher than that.

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You need to read that definition again. It's "at or above the species level." That's the definition I've been using all along.Now, you're probably going to play dumb and insist that the comment about "geologic time" is part of that, but if you're going to do that, then you need to go whole hog and read the entire definition, including the supplement, and pay attention to what "macroevolution" is compared against: Catch that last part? "Macroevolution" is compared against "microevolution" which is about evolutionary processes within a species or population. And let's take a look at how your source defines "microevolution": Thus, it is clear to all but the most obstinate observer that the "geologic time" is more of an indicator of the typical rather than an insistent part of the definition. That is, it is rare for macroevolutionary events to happen quickly (especially for taxonomic changes high up the clade diagram), but not impossible. The defining characteristic of macroevolution is not the amount of time it took but rather the effect: Did you get a new species? Great...you've got macroevolution. Did you only get variations or a sub-species? Then that's microevolution.

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But if other people are talking about how we haven't really witnessed things above the species level, then its beside the point to say that this here speciation event that we've witnessed counts.

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But we have. We have witnessed directly with our own eyes changes above the species level. We have seen new genera and even a few new families and orders.Why would you have us lie about that?

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Which genera?

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I've posted the links to the original papers before. Here's a chance for you to do some homework. Go to PubMed and look them up. Here's a start:PLoS One. 2012;7(3):e32198. Epub 2012 Mar 19.Meloneis gen. Nov., a new epipsammic genus of rhaphoneidaceae (bacillariophyceae).Louvrou I, Danielidis DB, Economou-Amilli A.SourceDepartment of Ecology and Systematics, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.AbstractThe diatom family Rhaphoneidaceae is characterized by high generic diversity and low species diversity with most genera known to have long stratigraphic ranges. The genera within this family are neritic marine, and mostly epipsammic. A new modern and epipsammic genus, Meloneis gen. nov., is described herein and is compared to all genera within Rhaphoneidaceae and especially to Rhaphoneis Ehrenberg s.l. Within Meloneis three new species and one variety are distinguished and described herein: M. mimallis sp. nov., M. mimallis var. zephyria var. nov., M. akytos sp. nov., and M. gorgis sp. nov.PMID: 22442663 [PubMed - in process] PMCID: PMC3307707

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What kind of gross morphological changes?

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I've posted the links to the original papers before. Here's a chance for you to do some homework. Go to PubMed and look them up. There's morphology in snails such as venom glands, for example.Do not confuse your ignorance with a universal trait. This is a common problem among creationists. They seem to think that because they don't know something, nobody else does, either. It never occurs to them that perhaps they aren't in a position to make a blanket statement about what we have and have not seen. Consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you need to spend more time in the stacks of your local science library doing some research before making a statement about what the state of the science is.

Catholic Scientist responds to me:

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When people are talking about witnessing macroevolution, they're not talking about a speciation event in a lab.

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Then they're moving the goalposts. A speciation event is "macroevolution" by definition.That it happens in a lab is immaterial.

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Rule 6: Avoid lengthy cut-n-pastes.

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(*chuckle*)I give you the reference, the title, the author, the source, the abstract, and the PMID so that you can go look it up yourself and ensure that you have no reason to complain about the source being insufficient, and you have gall to complain that it's "lengthy"? You sit here and whine about how we've never seen it and when the book floats off the shelf of its own accord to your hand, opens itself to the correct page, and the important phrase glows and sparkles to catch your attention, you decide to complain that it's too much? So it seems you'll bitch when I don't do your homework for you and then you'll moan when I do.It would appear that all you really want to do is be angry.

Modulous responds to me:

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When creationists say we have not witnessed macroevolution, they are not using the word 'macroevolution' in the sense that scientists typically do.

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Why are we beholden to people who don't know what the word means, then?Since Catholic Scientist doesn't like "lengthy cut-and-paste," let's see if he can do his own homework: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution
Observed Instances of Speciation
Some More Observed Speciation Events
Creationist Claim CB910: No new species have been observed.There are plenty of examples of speciation happening both in the lab and in the wild. Speciation, by definition, is macroevolution. If we're going to let the creationists move the goalposts, then what is the point? After all, this is the entire point: Creationists don't know what a "kind" is. In fact, it is so bad that the functional definition of "kind" seems to be "a taxonomic group that I don't think any scientist has ever documented a transition within." When we show them new species of fruit flies appearing (section 5.3 of the first speciation link), they respond with, "But it's still a fly!"Indeed. A new "kind" of fly. So then they say that "kind" doesn't mean species.Why would we ever allow someone to move the goalposts?

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We should address what creationists mean when they say macroevolution rather than addressing what a scientist would mean if they said the same thing.

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No, we shouldn't. We don't let the people who don't know what they're talking about to define the terms.